Article by Br Francis, M.I.C.M.—"St. Jerome, Doctor of Biblical Studies"


Saint Jerome (c. 341-420) is both a Father and a Doctor of the Church; and he has, through the centuries, been a great light and inspiration to the whole world. We are convinced that we need him now more than ever and in a very special way, facing as we are the present crisis of faith, and the multitude of rampant heresies devastating the vineyard of the Lord. The root cause of this crisis, according to a great leader in the Church, Cardinal Paul Taguchi of Tokyo, can be traced to false Biblical studies. Let us give the exact words of the Cardinal:
“The root causes of this new slant on sacred Scripture studies are to be found among those that underlie all of the present doctrinal confusion. Firstly, there is the influence that liberal evolutionist rationalism has had on theological thought; secondly, the sway of ‘modern philosophy’ based on subjective premises, which has penetrated various areas of thought, even in the field of theology. Both of these have favored a gradual impoverishment of Christian life in general, even to the stage where a sense of faith and of the supernatural is entirely lost.”

In the face of this crisis of faith, which is generally admitted, we feel we must resort to the great Saint Jerome: we must raise him up for an example, and must seek him for intercession.

The Fathers and Doctors of the Church

Catholics today should pay great attention to the Fathers and to the Doctors instead of listening to the Liberal and Modernist speculators in false theology, who, in great numbers, are confusing the faithful and leading men to hell. A Father of the Church is an ancient Christian writer who gave testimony to what the Christians believed in the early ages of the Church. A Doctor of the Church is a teacher of the Faith, outstanding for holiness as well as learning (eximia scientia et eximia sanctitas). The list of Fathers is long and indefinite, and not all the Fathers are canonized saints. Some examples of the Fathers are: St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Basil the Great, Tertullian, and Origen. Since the Church has judged that at least in some of their writings they deviated from orthodoxy, these last two, Origen and Tertullian, are not recognized as saints. Two of the other Fathers we mentioned, St. Ephrem and St. Basil, are not only Fathers, but are also Doctors of the Church as well.

The list of Doctors of the Church contains now exactly 33 persons. Only two of them are popes: St. Leo the Great and St. Gregory the Great; and now we have in this list two holy women, St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa of Avila. All the Doctors are canonized saints, every one of them having been given that title, as well as an annual feast day and the Mass of a Doctor, by one of the popes. The Doctors can be of ancient times, like St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom, and thus qualify to be considered Fathers; and they can be of modern times, like St. Alphonsus de Liguori and St. Francis de Sales. St. Jerome, as we have said, is both a Father and a Doctor of the Church.

Life of Saint Jerome

St. Jerome was born about the year 342 in a small town called Stridonium in Dalmatia (now part of Croatia), and he died in the year 420 in the town of Bethlehem, where Our Savior was born. We notice from the span of his life how close he was to the time of the last persecution, which although it was supposed to have ended when Constantine proclaimed the liberty of the Church by the Edict of Milan (313), actually continued in the East under the pagan emperor Licinius (d.325) for many years after the Edict was issued. During the persecution of Julian the Apostate 1 (361-363), Saint Jerome would have been a young man of about twenty or twenty-one...

St. Jerome received very good education and excellent moral principles from his father at home, after which he was sent to Rome for further studies. In Rome he was taught by some very famous teachers; he became a master of Greek and Latin, and was introduced to the great classics of antiquity. While a student in the great city, away from home, he became, as he was to accuse himself later in life, more of a pagan than a Christian. The sonorous and beautiful — but still pagan — poetry of Cicero, Plautus and other Latins was a source of too much enjoyment for a man called, as he was, to such sublime sanctity.

More at:
http://catholicism.org/jerome-life.html